week nineteen — conversation

this week’s photo was taken by my friend and fellow photography enthusiast Delma Flores. thanks for sharing, Delma! her notes on the shot are below — enjoy!

This was taken shortly after getting my 50mm f/1.8 (nifty fifty!). Because you can’t zoom in and out, it forces you to actually move in order to get the composition you want. I was pretty proud of myself for not chopping off any body parts here, which I did a lot of when I started with playing with this lens.

I was so excited about being able to go all the way to f/1.8 that I’m pretty sure I shot wide open all weekend. Turns out you get the sharpest pictures shooting one or two stops below the largest aperture, but I still choose this aperture often. I love the bokeh it creates. It’s also what blurred out the shoes, allowing you to focus on the facial expression of the subject (aka my significant other), which I find interesting.

I could have asked him to pose for me, but we were actually having a serious conversation about scary adult things, and this expression was an honest representation of how he felt at the moment. The funny thing is, when there’s a camera around, both the photographer and the subject are very aware of it. So while I was listening and taking his words very seriously, I was simultaneously noticing the light shining through the trees in the background, the cool wall he was sitting on, and how interesting I found his worried face…so I took the shot. And while he was talking about things that made him uncomfortable, he chose to sit on that wall, with both of his feet up – he was subconsciously posing for me.